| The Naked Tourist: In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall |  | Author: Lawrence Osborne
Publisher: North Point Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Seller: vana11
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 1,164,539
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.8
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.4092
ASIN: B002YNS1BQ
Publication Date: June 12, 2007
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Product Description
Sick of producing the picturesque bromides of the professional travel writer, Lawrence Osborne decided to explore the psychological underpinnings of tourism itself by taking a six-month journey down the so-called “Asian Highway”—a swath of Southeast Asia that, since the Victorian era, has seduced generations of tourists with its manufactured dreams of the exotic Orient. And like many a lost soul on this same route, he ends up in the harrowing forests of Papua, searching for a people who have never seen a tourist.
What, Osborne asks, are millions of affluent itinerants from the West looking for as they wade through endless resorts, hotels, cosmetic-surgery packages, spas, spiritual retreats, sex clubs, and “back to nature” trips? What does tourism, the world’s single largest business, have to sell? The Naked Tourist is a travelogue into that heart of darkness known as the Western mind.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
 ENTERTAINING AND INFORMATIVE December 10, 2008
Joseph H. Race (SAIPAN, MP United States)
Osborne is a fun, talented, irreverant, witty, informative and insightful writer about the places he decided to visit and report his observations and opinions. I've been to most of those places that he discussed and he gave me a fresh look at some of the locales, and his writing encouraged me to do some revisits. It is not your average travel book - his writing makes you think and re-consider some of your ideas about travel, especially now that we view the world as global, and most destinations are only a few hours away. His postscript/summary was excellent. Buy the book!
 Entertaining but missing the point April 1, 2008
Bianchini Francesco (Umbria, Italy)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I drifted through this book, occasionally catching a coursing wind. Mr Osborne is a talented writer with a taste for quirky humorous detail. The chapter called Hedonopolis is truly funny. Opinionated I don't mind, yet I often found his outlook a bit too gloomy. In this age of global tourism, we still can be either a tourist or a traveler depending on how pervious, curious and fair minded our approach. If it is adventure and beauty you look for - even in the age of the airport mall - why on earth go to the Hilton Waikoloa Village, getting drunk and watching TV?
Opinionated and fascinating September 1, 2007
John Glines (Bangkok, Thailand)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I like a writer who's opinionated, and Osborned is certainly that. This is not a guidebook. It's one man's opinion of where he's been, what he's seen, and what he's experienced. For me, that makes fascinating reading. And as an expat living in Bangkok, I must say that his basic take on Bangkok is spot on. It seems just off the cuff but he has a real grasp of the city he calls "Hedonopolis", Bangkok being today what Venice was during the time of young Englishmen taking the Grand Tour. Chai yo!
Hoo Hum August 28, 2006
Miran Ali (Dhaka, Bangladesh)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Osborne travels from Dubai, to Calcutta, the Andamans, Bangkok, Bali and finally Papua New Gineau. Well I've been to all of these places except the Andamans and PNG. Frankly I found Osboborne to be a bit dull, not very funny and not really anything new or insightful about his travels. I enjoyed his history of tourism though.
Let's say this is a travel magazine article quality book. I've read better. There was also atleast one factual error, where he refers to the 1973 war in Bangladesh. Methinks he meant 1971. Careless and a sure sign of bad editing. He also claimed to have stumbled accross the Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok. To claim to have stumbled accross such a hospital is to imply that he did no research at all prior to setting off. That just doesn't ring true.
A Rather Crotchety Traveler Mired Most Entertainingly in Self-Discovery June 20, 2006
Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
It's quite obvious that Alain de Botton, author of "The Art of Travel", and Lawrence Osborne are kindred spirits in their expert ability to discern the power of "whateverness" in experiencing locations foreign to one's sensibilities. Osborne's initial premise is to move from civilization to the bowels of the planet in order to show how the world has become less individualistic, that it seems one-size-fits-all tourism has diluted the cultural sense of locations and that the true allure of travel can only be found in the world's most remote pockets. I don't think he entirely proves his thesis, but his biting and entertaining travel tome is quite a treat, as he cuts a sharp swath through the Asian corridor from Dubai to Papua-New Guinea.
He is not your typical globe trekker but a traveler who shifts his motivations as the circumstances dictate. Sometimes the author reaches a cathartic point of self-discovery, but more often, he seems to be going back to something instinctual as if his travels satisfy a need simply to roam. His sense of adventure borders on the absurdly humiliating, for example, a high-colonic he has in Bangkok, which brings out the worst nightmares of medical treatment abroad. In Dubai, where he begins his journeys in earnest, he describes in vivid detail "The World", an extravagant project to be designed to recreate the entire globe with three-hundred man-made islands in the Persian Gulf, each up for sale to highest bidders among the world's nations. Bangkok beckons him for the luxury and potential debauchery of its Vegas-like spas, and with the plethora of party-seeking foreign tourists and American-style bars, Bali brings the author a faux-sense of its culture and people seemingly brainwashed to accommodate tourist expectations. He is enamored with the works of legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead and others of her field who have perhaps inadvertently built up the mystique and idyllic state of Bali.
However, the best part of the book focuses on the author's transformative moments in Papua, where the somewhat surreal existence of its native population gives him pause. He comes upon an abandoned missionary house in Wanggemalo where he is gawked at by members of the local tribe, the Kombai. A typical ritual of the Kombai is cutting potential sorcerers into four parts, then cooking their brains and viscera on hot stones and eating them. As Osborne delves deeper into the jungle, he is met with even greater peril where he eats pasty-floured grubs and meets natives who know nothing of an outside world. Osborne's cynicism wears away in this section as he develops an honest rapport with the Papuan jungle natives much to his chagrin. It is indeed a grand journey by a most English gentleman.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
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